Category Archives: Guns and Ammo

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Friday, January 16, 2015

Digby notes an interesting phenomenon: certain people get hysterical when there’s an attack that is labeled as terrorism (i.e. Charlie Hebdo). They want to declare war against international Islam and shred up the Constitution to protect us. Yet when there’s a school shooting (i.e. Sandy Hook) these same people get all cautious about a rush to judgment and very protective of civil liberties.

Why is that?

I can think of two reasons. First, to them any connection to Islam — even if it’s tenuous or done by a fringe splinter offshoot of some tiny faction — makes it The Gravest Threat to America. So the shooter could have dated a girl whose brother once bought a car from a guy who lived next door to a man named Mustaffah and all of a sudden he’s a jihadist. Or he could claim allegiance to a radical group that is says it is rooted in Islam but is made up of three other guys who are holed up in a studio apartment in Niwot, Colorado, and making meth on the side. It doesn’t matter; he’s a believer in Islam, therefore all Muslims are terrorists and they should be hunted down. By that logic, all Christians should be hunted down because David Koresh at Waco claimed to be a Christian.

A school shooter, however, goes in with a gun he bought at a gun show and gets his ammo over the internet. He shows up at a campus and slaughter ensues. But it happens in America and he has a copy of American Rifleman sitting on his coffee table when the CSI team shows up to gather evidence. Now he’s a lone wolf acting on his own using weapons he purchased legally, and while Wayne LaPierre says it’s a tragedy, there’s no reason to suggest that there’s any need to question his right to own thirty rifles, their barrels shined to a steely glow, and any attempt to prevent such future tragedies will destroy America’s dearly-won freedoms. Just because he — and it’s always a he — was a card-carrying member of the NRA doesn’t mean that all gun owners are capable of mowing down school kids at thirty bullets per second.

So if it’s wrong to demonize an entire community based on the actions of one person or small group of believers, why does that apply to the NRA but not to Islam? It shouldn’t, but then it’s a lot easier to demonize Other People than it is to piss off the base of a political party and the largest lobbying effort in Washington.

That’s the second reason. If elected officials weren’t terrorized by the NRA, we’d have Newt Gingrich and the rest of the Chicken Hawks on cable TV demanding that Congress do something about the guns, and if the NRA doesn’t like it, well, they’d have to realize, just as Pope Francis says, that there are limits to freedom.

Monday, November 24, 2014

St. Louis police were investigating an incident in which a woman waving a gun inside a vehicle and saying she was “ready for Ferguson” apparently shot herself in the head by accident, CNN reported Sunday.

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said the shooting occurred Friday night in the city’s downtown area. Sources briefed on the investigation told CNN that a police report identified the victim as 26-year-old Becca Campbell.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Gun stores near the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson have seen sales zoom as the area awaits a grand jury decision on whether to indict a police officer for shooting unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

John Stephenson of Metro Shooting Supplies in nearby Bridgeton said he normally sells 10 to 15 guns a day. But for the last three weeks, he said he has been selling between 30 and 50 guns daily, a nearly 300 percent increase.

The grand jury’s decision was initially expected by mid-November and law enforcement authorities have been training in case the jury’s ruling triggers another spasm of violent protests.

This assumes that the grand jury will not indict the officer and that the black population will riot in the streets, so all the white folks are arming themselves to the teeth.

Does it occur to any of them that the grand jury might indict the officer and the white folk might react in a negative fashion? Or that even if they don’t, that there aren’t some white people who feel that Michael Brown was murdered and the policeman should stand trial?

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Even as Coloradans elected a Republican senator for the first time in a dozen years and handed Republicans control of one chamber of the state legislature, voters did an abrupt about-face when it came to the recalls. The two pro-gun Republicans elected during the recalls were handily beaten this month by Democratic candidates — one of whom once worked for the gun-control group founded by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City.

What won the races was turn-out.

Analysts said the whipsawing results were a lesson in how turnout can vastly change the landscape of the politics in this state, which has an independent streak. The dynamic seems to have empowered conservatives in the low-turnout recall vote last year, but rewarded Democrats this month in a midterm election in which mail-in ballots and a contested Senate race helped Colorado defy a nationwide pattern of sagging voter participation.

Friday, October 31, 2014

Federal agents reportedly found a supply of the explosive ammonium nitrate, along with a pile of guns and ammo, when they searched the hotel room of a leader of a Texas border militia member earlier this month.

Friday, October 24, 2014

In a newly released video from a 2012 National Rifle Association event, Iowa Republican senate candidate Joni Ernst said that she would use a gun to defend herself from the government.

“I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family — whether it’s from an intruder, or whether it’s from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important,” Ernst said at the rally, which was held about a month after James Holmes allegedly murdered 12 people in Aurora, CO.

I get the part about defending herself against an intruder, but from the government? Does that mean she’s going to pull a gun on a cop that gives her a ticket for a busted taillight? Draw down on the census taker or the IRS?

The problem with this new quote is that it borders on anti-democratic. I don’t care how many times you praise the Founding Fathers or talk about your love of the Constitution, if you think that the way to resolve policy differences or personal arguments with the government is not just by trying to get different people elected or waging a campaign to change the laws or filing suits in court, but through the use of violence against the government, you have announced that you have no commitment to democracy. In the American system, we don’t say that if the government enacts policies we don’t like, we’ll start killing people. It’s not clear that Ernst meant this, but it’s fair to ask her to explain what she did mean.

There’s a real chance she could be the next senator from Iowa. Do the good people of Iowa really want someone who thinks the best way to protect themselves is by having gunshots flying?

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Buying that new gun to prevent crime? I hope you have better luck than this dude.

GRESHAM, OR (KPTV) – A man openly carrying his new handgun was robbed on a Gresham street by a man with a gun of his own.

Police were called out to the area of 172nd and Glisan Street at 2:10 a.m. Saturday.

Investigators said the 21-year-old victim bought a handgun earlier in the day and was openly carrying it while talking to his cousin.

They said a man approached them and asked for a cigarette. Talk eventually turned to the victim’s new purchase, before the robber pulled his own gun from his waistband and said, “I like your gun, give it to me,” according to police.

Friday, August 29, 2014

People from all over the world are flocking to places like the range in Arizona where a 9-year-old accidentally killed an instructor with an Uzi.

With gun laws keeping high-powered weapons out of reach for most people — especially those outside the U.S. — indoor shooting ranges with high-powered weapons have become a popular attraction.

Tourists from Japan flock to ranges in Waikiki, Hawaii, and the dozen or so that have cropped up in Las Vegas offer bullet-riddled bachelor parties and literal shotgun weddings, where newly married couples can fire submachine gun rounds and pose with Uzis and ammo belts.

“People just want to experience things they can’t experience elsewhere,” said Genghis Cohen, owner of Machine Guns Vegas. “There’s not an action movie in the past 30 years without a machine gun.”

Hey, Disney World and Cedar Point, you’re missing out on a lot of action unless you open up The Wonderful World of Carnage.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

An instructor who was shot by a 9-year-old girl who fired an Uzi at a northwestern Arizona shooting range died Monday night at University Medical Center in Las Vegas.The girl fired the weapon at the outdoor range that caters to heavy tourism traffic along U.S. Highway 93 between Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

Highway signage and Internet advertising beckons visitors to stop in, fire a machine gun and enjoy a meal at the Bullets and Burgers enterprise at the Last Stop, about 25 miles south of Las Vegas.

The Mohave County Sheriff’s Office said the accidental shooting occurred about 10 a.m. Spokeswoman Trish Carter said the girl, who was vacationing from New Jersey with her parents, was standing next to the instructor at the time.

Mohave County Sheriff Jim McCabe described a video taken of the accident as “ghastly.” His office released a short video of the girl taking her first few shots.

He said the girl safely and successfully fired the 9 mm weapon several times when it was set in the “single-shot” mode.

He said the weapon was put into the “fully-automatic” mode before the girl fired again with the instructor standing off to her left. The weapon recoiled and drifted left as the girl squeezed off an undetermined number of rounds as she maintained possession but lost control of the Uzi as it raised up above her head.

“The guy just dropped,” McCabe said of shooting instructor Charles Vacca, 39, of Lake Havasu City, who suffered at least one gunshot to the head.

I’m sure his family and friends are devastated, but who in the world hands an Uzi to a nine-year-old kid and doesn’t foresee something like this happening?

I’m also sure the kid is traumatized, but I wonder what kind of parent takes their child to a gun range and lets them use an Uzi? A .22, perhaps, like they use at the rifle range at camp, but a weapon that the Israelis used to win the 6-Day War? Really?

Maybe we don’t need gun control after all; with people like this in self-extinction mode, they’ll die out by their own devices.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

According to the parole board in Georgia, the Second Amendment is absolute, trumping every other amendment, including those that guarantee life, liberty, and safety, and even a former police officer, now a convicted felon and rapist — white, of course — has the right to carry a gun once he’s served his debt to society.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “[h]is record was filled with allegations of misconduct: that he beat a prisoner so severely the man’s brain bled; that he threatened to fabricate charges against a suspect so he could sleep with the man’s wife; that he pressured at least 10 women for sex to avoid arrest.” The former cop, for his part, is unrepentant. When asked about his sexual assault conviction, he claims that “[t]here wasn’t any crime,” and that “I was dealt a bad hand.”

And yet, in July of 2013, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles restored Krauss’ right to carry a firearm. According to a Journal-Constitution tally, he is one of 358 violent felons who regained these rights over a six year period. That includes 32 violent felons who killed someone, and 44 who committed sex crimes. One man regained his right to own a gun in 2012 after serving a 10 year sentence for child molestation and aggravated child molestation. Some offenders regained their gun rights after being convicted of crimes such as armed robbery, burglary or aggravated assault.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

VALDOSTA — On the first day of the new Georgia Safe Carry Protection Act, a misunderstanding between two armed men in a convenience store Tuesday led to a drawn firearm and a man’s arrest.

“Essentially, it involved one customer with a gun on his hip when a second customer entered with a gun on his hip,” said Valdosta Police Chief Brian Childress.

At approximately 3 p.m. Tuesday, police responded to a call regarding a customer dispute at the Enmark on the corner of Park Avenue and North Lee Street.

A man carrying a holstered firearm entered the store to make a purchase. Another customer, also with a holstered firearm, approached him and demanded to see his identification and firearms license, according to the Valdosta Police Department report.

The customer making demands for ID pulled his firearm from its holster but never pointed it at the other customer, who said he was not obligated to show any permits or identification.

He demanded the man’s ID again. Undeterred by the drawn gun, the man paid for his items, left the store and called for police.

Authorities arrested Ronald Williams, 62, on a charge of disorderly conduct, related to the pulling of a weapon inside of the store, according to the VPD. Police confiscated Williams’ weapon and took him to the Lowndes County Jail.

Not that I’m in favor of gun violence, but maybe they’ll just end up shooting each other and leave the rest of us in peace. Unfortunately, they’ll probably hit some kid in a hoodie carrying a bag of Skittles and iced tea. By accident, of course.

Not coincidentally, Target wants nothing to do with people carrying guns into their stores.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Charlie Pierce nails the people responsible for empowering this madness.

It is time for the political elite in the country to force the choice, once and for all. It is time for the people who care about this country to shun these people, and the politicians who empower them, and the media superstars who pander to their worst instincts, and to the political ideas that have proven themselves to be, over and over again, the most dangerous in the country’s history. It’s time for Boehner, and Priebus, and entire Republican political apparatus publicly to renounce secessionism, and nullification, and the idea that we are now — or are dangerously on the brink of—tyranny, if the word has any meaning at all. That means reading the people who promote this stuff out of your party, whether they are members of Congress or state legislators, or members of the state and national committees. That means depriving of your presence any media member who trafficks in this perilous foolishness, and punishing those Republicans who decline to do the same.

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